This study examines the long-term institutional volunteer model of Ankara University Toy Museum through an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design. Drawing on data from fifty-one volunteers, the research integrates quantitative descriptive statistics with reflexive thematic analysis to explore both the structural and experiential dimensions of volunteer engagement. Quantitative findings indicate a sustained participation pattern, with an average volunteer duration of 3.64 years and a continuation rate exceeding 50%. These structural indicators suggest that the museum operates a stable and institutionally embedded volunteer framework rather than an episodic or event-based system. However, limited research has systematically examined how university museums function as long-term professional formation environments through volunteer engagement. To deepen this understanding, qualitative analysis was conducted following Braun and Clarke’s reflexive thematic approach. Four major themes emerged: professional identity formation, participatory engagement and role ownership, institutional belonging and collaborative culture, and transformative long-term impact. The findings demonstrate that volunteer participation functions as a developmental ecosystem integrating experiential learning, shared responsibility, relational cohesion, and career orientation. Rather than serving solely as auxiliary support, volunteers actively contribute to institutional processes, while simultaneously constructing professional identities within a university museum context. Conceptually, the study proposes a sustainable institutional volunteer model that bridges participatory museology, informal learning theory, and socio-museology. By foregrounding volunteers as internal actors in museum ecosystems, the research extends existing discussions on participatory practice and offers empirical evidence from a university-affiliated museum in Türkiye. The study highlights the importance of structural integration, meaningful role-taking, and collaborative culture in sustaining long-term volunteer engagement.
This study explores how contemporary art and culture can serve as tools of resilience in post-conflict and transitional societies, using the long-term evolution of Ars Aevi, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sarajevo, as a case study. Founded during the siege of Sarajevo (1992–1995) as a collective, international act of cultural resistance, Ars Aevi brought together donated works from globally renowned artists in a gesture of solidarity and peace. Since its arrival in Sarajevo in 1999, the Collection has remained without a permanent museum building, existing instead in a prolonged state of “limbo” and migrating between temporary sites—from the ice rink of Skenderija’s cultural and sports center and the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Youth Center in Skenderija Center, and currently Sarajevo City Hall. Despite this nomadic trajectory, Ars Aevi still exerts significant symbolic and cultural impact. This study proposes a vision for its next phase: activating Sarajevo’s public spaces through an open-air museum model. By situating selected artworks from the Collection in key urban locations, the city itself is envisioned as a living exhibition, embedding contemporary art into everyday civic life prior to the construction of the museum’s permanent home, designed by Renzo Piano. In response to ongoing spatial and political uncertainty, drawing on theories of resilience, civic participation, and cultural democratization, through spatial analysis, archival research, and visual mapping, the study positions Ars Aevi as a prototype of cultural resistance that continues to unfold in public space while awaiting a permanent institutional home.
The Making Sense project aims to enhance museum and gallery experiences for visually impaired individuals through multisensory design. It begins by analyzing the current situation of blind and partially sighted (BPS) people, highlighting the accessibility limitations that remain in traditional museums and galleries. Using a co-design approach with visually impaired individuals, the study seeks to understand their needs, preferences, and challenges in engaging with artworks. The activity is primarily divided into two parts: co-design workshops and the studio-based making process. While these two strands are closely interconnected, they are discussed separately for clarity. The co-design workshops support direct user participation, generating insights that inform the development of prototypes and multisensory installations in the studio. Results from both processes provide key findings for enhancing non-visual engagement with art. Overall, the project promotes inclusive art experiences, cultural accessibility, and supports the rights of people with disabilities in museum and gallery spaces.
In a time when museums are expected to remain relevant, trusted, and accessible to diverse audiences, branding has emerged as a strategic dimension of institutional communication rather than a purely promotional activity. This conceptual article examines how branding can support museum identity, public trust, and science communication in an increasingly digital and participatory cultural landscape. Drawing on literature from cultural branding, museum studies, and digital transformation, the article adopts a conceptual framework that integrates Aaker’s brand identity model, Kotler’s nonprofit branding perspective, and the Integrated Museum Engagement Model (IMEM) proposed by Cesário and Campos. This article aims to provide museum professionals and researchers with a structured reflection on how branding practices can align institutional mission, audience engagement, and ethical responsibility. The article discusses the evolution of museum branding from traditional visual identity frameworks to participatory and digitally mediated experiences, including social media engagement, immersive technologies, and hybrid cultural environments. It examines key tensions such as the balance between cultural integrity and commercialization, the ethical implications of digital engagement, and the structural limitations faced by smaller institutions. In addition to outlining these challenges, the article offers practical insights for museum professionals seeking inclusive, mission-aligned, and low-cost branding strategies. While theoretical in nature, the article identifies future research opportunities, including comparative studies, audience impact evaluation, and participatory methodologies. Ultimately, it argues that inclusive branding can help museums build more meaningful and lasting relationships with their publics in an increasingly complex and connected world.
This study examines the bande dessinée (BD) Louvre project as a model of inclusive museum practice, exploring how the Louvre’s collaboration with comic artists redistributes the interpretive authority traditionally concentrated within canonical cultural institutions. Comics, long marginalized as a popular or subcultural form, gain institutional legitimacy as the Louvre formally invites practitioners of the ninth art into its spaces, collections, and curatorial discourse. Drawing on case studies from French, Belgian, Japanese, and Taiwanese artists, this study argues that the BD Louvre project enacts two forms of inclusion: the legitimization of comics as a serious artistic and curatorial medium, and the facilitation of cross-cultural dialogue across diverse comics traditions and readerships. Using Hans Belting’s image–medium–body framework as an analytical tool, the study examines how artists reimagine the Louvre’s iconic works through culturally specific visual languages and book materialities, transforming museum memory into a dynamic, portable experience that extends beyond the physical galleries and into readers’ everyday spaces and imaginations. The BD Louvre project thus emerges not merely as a publishing initiative, but as an inclusive mediation strategy that opens the museum’s memory to broader artistic and cultural participation.
This article examines Kuća Bakić—Museum of Homes, a project of the Bjelovar City Museum, as a practice-led case study in inclusive museology. Situated in the childhood home of sculptor Vojin Bakić in Bjelovar, Croatia, the project departs from the conventional biographical house museum and reconceives domestic space as a shared interpretive resource. This article introduces memotopia, a concept developed within the project to describe the affective intersection of personal memory, collective history, and the symbolic imaginary of home. Methodologically, the article combines reflective curatorial analysis, project documentation, preliminary community contributions, and early interpretive responses. Rather than reconstructing an authoritative historical interior, Kuća Bakić works through absence, fragmentation, oral testimony, community-contributed narratives, and ordinary objects. Through the example of a donated shirt belonging to a Croatian war veteran detained in the Sremska Mitrovica camp, the article demonstrates how domestic heritage can also address the violent deformation of home. It argues that this approach shifts the museum from a site of representation toward a site of recognition, encounter, and shared authorship. In post-socialist contexts marked by migration, rupture, and contested belonging, small-scale domestic heritage can operate as a powerful civic medium. Kuća Bakić therefore offers a model for museums seeking to foster localized cultural justice and more inclusive forms of belonging within and beyond the Croatian context.
Tensions and violence associated with racism and other forms of oppression are on the rise, with individuals from equity-deserving groups being most overtly and deeply affected. Within this social climate, museums and galleries have the potential to become spaces that support care, transformative action, and social healing. The research at the center of this article explores how contemporary artists working with participatory anti-racist practices can promote shifts in cultural and social attitudes and behaviors. Three racialized artists working with anti-racist artistic practices were invited to engage in participatory artist residencies in a university art gallery. Data collection included visitor and artist interviews, observations, and participatory action research with university students. Analysis of the data revealed that each artist chose to employ artistic approaches to anti-racism that support social healing experiences. Based on this, we ask: How can contemporary anti-racist artistic methods support the potential for social healing in art gallery education? The artists’ participatory, care-focused, and relational practices provide creative pedagogical methods for critiquing, disrupting, and transforming oppressive narratives and practices within and beyond museums and galleries. This article highlights artistic methods for supporting social participation, care, transformative action, and social healing in museum and gallery education.
Designing space in museums can influence visitors’ experiences, as it can impact visitors’ ability to navigate through the museum and to engage with as well as learn from exhibits. Although extensive research exists on museum architecture, exhibition design, and visitor behavior, this body of work remains conceptually fragmented across disciplines. In particular, there is limited systematic understanding of how spatial design research has evolved in relation to visitor experience. This study addresses this gap by offering a bibliometric synthesis of scholarship at the intersection of spatial design and visitor experience in museums. Based on an analysis of 252 publications indexed in Scopus, the study examines publication trends, intellectual foundations, and thematic structures within the field. The findings reveal a research landscape anchored in spatial configuration and architectural theory, while simultaneously expanding toward experiential, behavioral, and digitally mediated perspectives. However, the analysis also exposes a persistent imbalance: Advanced spatial frameworks are widely employed, yet visitor experience is often inferred through movement and visibility patterns rather than examined through integrated cognitive, emotional, and behavioral measures. By mapping how spatial design research has clustered and evolved in relation to visitor experience, this study clarifies conceptual alignments, methodological gaps, and emerging directions within museum scholarship. The findings contribute to theory-building by highlighting the need for integrative approaches that link spatial metrics with experiential data. These findings also provide a foundation for future empirical research aimed at developing more holistic, experience-driven museum environments.
This article examines approaches to decolonization in the UK museum sector, through the lens of Sara Ahmed’s notion of non-performative utterances. The avalanche of responses of the sector to the global 2020 Black Lives Matter protests is framed in the article as statements that do not bring into effect what they name while also preventing further reflection. To do so, the article analyzes, on the one hand, a series of reports issued from 2022 to 2024 looking at changes in the sector post-2020 and, on the other hand, the personal accounts of museum workers of color in the context of decolonial initiatives and EDI (equality, diversity, and inclusion) programs. Ahmed’s work, in dialogue with Brook et al. shows how the museum sector’s postures of self-criticality do not automatically give way to systemic change but rather allow critical awareness to sit alongside persistent and largely unchallenged racial inequality.
This article examines the intersection of inclusivity, interdisciplinary practices, and critical pedagogy in graduate-level heritage studies programs in the United States, with a focus on public-facing professions. The main challenge identified is the gap in graduate students’ preparation for navigating accessible, inclusive, and equitable work environments in heritage fields. The article reviews current knowledge systems and models for understanding disability in heritage education and offers practical guidance for promoting inclusive thinking and accessible practices in graduate programs. Many students enter graduate education with backgrounds in history and heritage from isolated disciplines, often lacking exposure to the broader societal and ethical responsibilities of public history work. Consequently, despite increasing interest in inclusive educational and professional environments, heritage studies programs frequently do not provide students with the necessary tools to address these issues in practice. Reforming curricula and institutional practices can enable graduate students in heritage education to influence the future of the field and create more inclusive cultural environments. The article calls for a reimagining of graduate education in heritage studies that develops students’ academic and professional skills and strengthens their ability to create inclusive, equitable spaces for both visitors and colleagues.
The role of museums, beyond collecting, exhibiting, and scientific research, is increasingly focused on visitor experience and social inclusion. This research aimed to explore how natural history museums can contribute to more inclusive museum practices. In an empirical study at the Hungarian Museum of Natural History, 156 university students participated in guided tours that were part of the museum’s regular educational program. While the traditional, information-centered tour (n = 80) followed the museum’s established guiding method, the experiential (flow-based) tour (n = 76) was developed as an experimental version for the purposes of this research. Data were collected through questionnaire surveys, focus group interviews, and observation. Based on Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) analysis of the quantitative data, analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests were run, which revealed significant differences on several dimensions. Flow-based guided tours were found to be significantly more modern, youthful, diverse, and exciting, while the evaluation of information transfer did not deteriorate. The qualitative data confirmed that the key factor for inclusion is not just the introduction of interactive elements but their coherent integration and the personal communication of the guide. The results indicate that science museums can become more inclusive if they are able to combine scientific authenticity with experiential learning and take into account the age and motivational diversity of visitors.
In the last decades, digital technologies and practices have produced major changes in the way heritage is conserved and accessed, offering new methods to collect, manage, and disseminate historical artifacts and knowledge. The transformative potential of the rising digital culture refers to the enhancement of traditional processes as well as to the development of unprecedented opportunities and formats, the outcomes of which are generating a particularly significant impact on audience engagement–i.e., on the creation of cognitive, emotional, or creative experiences that enable people to have an active part in the interpretation, presentation, and use of heritage. The study aims to observe one of these new formats–namely “digital creative competitions.” Specifically, it outlines this emerging practice and reflects on its potentialities and criticalities in light of the experience carried out within Open Atelier, a project funded by the European Commission Within the Creative Europe program (CREA-CULT-2021-COOP-2). The Open Atelier Digital Competition was launched in Spring 2024 to foster young creative talents to develop innovative reinterpretations of the collections of four European house museums based on their possible connection with the achievement of one or multiple tasks blueprinted by the Sustainable Development Goals at the core of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda. The evaluation of the outcomes of this experience provides evidence about the strategic role of digital audience engagement in generating innovation in the heritage sector by activating online co-creative forums through which young generations can become the producers and narrators of fresh and resonant perspectives.
This study examines how an integrated management framework, creative interpreter training, and a digital information system can enhance cultural conservation at the Wat Huai Tako Folk Museum in Nakhon Pathom Province. Employing a participatory action research design, the investigation engaged temple leaders, local stakeholders, students, and visitors through interviews, focus groups, structured surveys (n = 400), immersive workshops (n = 24), and pilot testing of an Omeka-based archive (n = 100). Findings reveal that formalizing governance via a multi-stakeholder committee yields coherent exhibit planning and improves operational standards. The creative interpreter program delivered significant gains in trainees’ understanding (pre- to post-training mean increase from 4.00 to 4.54) and confidence, validating dialogic, constructivist approaches to museum interpretation. User evaluations of the digital archive demonstrated high satisfaction across interface design, metadata completeness, and search performance, confirming the value of a user-friendly Dublin Core schema for inclusive access. Together, these interventions foster participatory governance, cultivate authentic storytelling, and extend museum reach beyond its physical confines. This holistic model aligns with new museology and inclusive museum principles, offering a replicable blueprint for temple and community museums aiming to democratize heritage stewardship, engage youth, and leverage technology for sustainable cultural education.
This study examines the extent to which museums in Croatia are prepared to provide an inclusive experience for visitors with disabilities, focusing on information accessibility, infrastructure, services, and interpretation. It also explores how this preparedness impacts their long-term sustainability. The research employs a quantitative design, utilizing an online survey distributed to Croatian museums that covers aspects of visit planning, physical accessibility, and the overall museum experience. Key findings indicate that while progress is being made, significant gaps persist in inclusive programming, architectural accessibility, and the provision of assistive technologies. Of all analyzed museums, only 42.3% offer specific programs for individuals with disabilities, and many lack crucial features such as information accessibility online and adequate physical accommodations, including tactile signage and adapted elevators. The study highlights that, while free or discounted admission is a positive incentive, it is insufficient on its own to ensure complete accessibility. The research highlights the crucial connection between inclusivity and museum sustainability, suggesting that enhanced accessibility can foster broader audience engagement, strengthen reputation, and lead to increased economic opportunities. However, challenges related to funding, staff education, and communication barriers remain significant. The findings serve as a benchmark for the cultural sector, informing policymakers and museum administrators to develop evidence-based strategies for creating more inclusive and sustainable museum environments in Croatia. The study’s implications are evident in providing a practical framework for museums to evolve into welcoming spaces that benefit society.
This study explores how museum experiences can be integrated into preschool curricula to enhance young children's participation, expression, and aesthetic learning. Conducted in a public kindergarten in Taoyuan, Taiwan, the research adopted a practice-based methodology over an eight-week thematic project titled Little Curators Program. Children aged 5 to 6 participated in co-curating exhibitions, including naming, spatial layout, and guided storytelling. Qualitative data were collected through observation, interviews, children's works, and video documentation. The findings reveal that young children demonstrated agency, narrative ability, and emotional-symbolic expression when granted curatorial roles. Their collaborative dialogue and spatial reasoning suggest that exhibition-making supports socialemotional development and multimodal literacy. Additionally, teachers shifted from product-oriented to process-oriented pedagogy, engaging in reflective practice and inquiry-based teaching. The study highlights exhibitions as inclusive learning environments that align with children's rights to cultural participation and voice, as emphasized in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Recommendations are offered for fostering sustainable school-museum partnerships, teacher professional development, and equitable access to cultural learning. This research affirms the potential of exhibition-based curricula as a powerful pedagogical tool in early childhood education.
